


you were on your way to heaven, but the road was steep

by postcardmystery



Category: The Wire
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Classism, Drug Use, Gen, Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-15
Updated: 2012-10-15
Packaged: 2017-11-16 09:37:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/538079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postcardmystery/pseuds/postcardmystery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Baltimore of 'we, the people' might not want him much, but that greydark sky and the tarmac beneath his car tires and the stink of the river, it takes him every time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you were on your way to heaven, but the road was steep

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for alcohol abuse and alcoholism, drug use, and institutionalized racism and classism.

This is what it is to know a city: the taste of the air on your tongue; the crack of the sidewalk beneath your feet; the feel of it in your blood and your cock and running in rivulets down the back of your neck. You can say a lot of things about Jimmy McNulty, he knows, but he knows who —  _what_  — he belongs to.

Baltimore of  _we, the people_  might not want him much, but that greydark sky and the tarmac beneath his car tires and the stink of the river, it takes him every time.

 

Everything comes at a price. His shield, his detective’s stripes, the fall back down and the climb back up. He’s married until he’s not, he’s a father except for how he isn’t, he’s a cop and he’s a cop and he’d turn it off, if he could, except, of course, he wouldn’t. They give you a shield and they give you a gun and it’s what you make of it, or at least that’s what they tell you, but he looks out the window and he looks out the window and he knows that in his city, things ain’t that fuckin’ simple.

 

Someone told him once that justice is a quest to readdress the balance. Sometimes he thinks back on that, laughs himself sick, looks at the vomit and knows he shouldn’t have tossed back that last whisky, the one that’s always bad for him and he drinks, all the same. Some things are cheap in Baltimore, but justice ain’t one of them. He thinks of balance, of how his hands shake in the mornings, of the war on drugs, of the gun beneath his arm and the shield that’s never quite big enough. 

This is a war they’re waging, and wars are chaos and blood and terror. Wars are the first last resort of the American justice system, the stick to beat about the monster beneath the bed, the monster that’s usually just a kid born in the wrong neighbourhood who was on the wrong street at the wrong time, and cops have quotas to fill, you know. Wars are about a lot of things, but they aren’t about balance.

But then, he guesses, he ain’t, either.

 

Lawyers always think he’s dumb as fuck. He opens his mouth and those  _ain’ts_  come out, clean and crisp as he’s never been, and it doesn’t matter what he’s done, who he’s broken, how many hours he’s worked or lives he’s saved or genius motherfuckers he’s beaten at their own game, this game is bigger than the field he’s playing on, and he’s got the worst of the bruises and the broken bones, but it doesn’t matter, it never ever matters. He’s a cop and he’s nothing and it doesn’t matter what he can do, he opens his mouth and those words come out and he’s dumb as fuck whether he likes it or not.

In Baltimore, he’s learned, the truth is what you make of it.

 

“You ain’t that smart, Jimmy,” says Bunk, says Landsman, says McNulty to his own reflection, every damn morning, but he still pulls that grin out of the bag, every single time.

 

The truth is the truth, but it’s not, because the streets write their own stories, and the cops do, too. He’s Homicide’s loose cannon, the guy who makes arrests drunk and punches walls because he got beat. He’s the cop’s cop, but he’s not, because he doesn’t play games, unless they’re ones he’ll win. He’s hard and he’s fast, but he’s never fast enough. He’s tough and he’s smart, but he gets knocked down on his ass every time. The street tells its own stories, he knows, and he’ll get writ whether he likes it or not. Time to make his mark. Time to make it  _count_.

 

“Why do we do it, Jimmy?” says Bunk, leaning against the hood of their car, sun rising over the river, their breath white in the air and McNulty’s knuckles purpled from some kid who’d made the biggest mistake of his life, and McNulty shrugs, passes him his hipflask, says, “Why not? What else you got in mind?”


End file.
